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The Mouse Family Robinson

Review

Old Mr Brown has had seventy-eight children (that is the way with mice). And with the Robinson's first babies on the way he advises them to name them following the letters of the alphabet.

Beaumont turns out to be the adventurous one, but this puts him in the most danger – from the household cat.

This simple tale, told with gentle humour, follows the mouse family's relocation to a cat-free home down the street, where they find a mouse-loving boy and his pet mice. The real story is about relationships and natural life cycles, friendships across the generations, tensions between groups of mice and the inevitability of new life replacing old.

Dick King-Smith deals matter-of-factly with death and birth in this quietly satisfying book.

Dick King-Smith served in the Grenadier Guards during the Second World War, and afterwards spent twenty years as a farmer in Gloucestershire, the county of his birth. Many of his stories are inspired by his farming experiences. He wrote a great number of children's books, including The Sheep-Pig (winner of the Guardian Award and filmed as Babe), Harry's Mad, The Hodgeheg, Martin's Mice, The Invisible Dog, The Queen's Nose and The Crowstarver. At the British Book Awards in 1991 he was voted Children's Author of the Year. In 2009 he was made OBE for services to children's literature. Dick King-Smith died in 2011 at the age of eighty-eight.